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Rocket was not in a good mood this morning.
As he sat slouched at one of the tables in the Guardians of the Galaxy Headquarters, his paws shook, his head ached, and his eyelids kept sliding shut against his will, feeling at least ten times heavier than usual.
With trembling arms, he picked up the cup of coffee he had painstakingly made for himself. The mug he was drinking out of was a gift he’d been sent by Mantis from a space station she’d visited; a stupid novelty mug with a handle in the shape of a pistol grip. It was the dumbest thing he’d ever owned. He loved it.
As he took a mouthful of the stuff, he grimaced. He normally took his coffee black, but had decided that today he needed the extra boost of energy and added some sugar. He figured two spoonfuls would be fine but now it just felt like he was drinking hot sugar-water. At the very least maybe the foul taste in his mouth would keep him from falling asleep for at least a while.
Suddenly, the door to HQ slid open, and the person entering bellowed out a loud “GOOD MORNING!” that caused Rocket’s ears to ring.
In walked Drax, and on this rare occasion he wasn't accompanied by any of the children. That was definitely for the best though considering the source of Rocket's agony this morning.
"Could you have said that any louder?" Rocket grumbled sarcastically at Drax. The Destroyer-turned-Dad gave a nod.
"Of course I could," he replied, missing the point as the door shut behind him. Drax moved closer, giving a bark of laughter once he took in Rocket's face. "You look dreadful!"
Rocket drank more of the coffee, the sweet liquid coating his throat unpleasantly. "I know,” he growled, “I was kept awake most of the night." He clutched his head and rubbed the space between his ears. "I've heard things, Drax. Terrible things."
Drax looked amused. "You all have such hangups about these sorts of things."
"So you could hear it too, huh?" Rocket almost felt sympathetic. "And for the record, I do not have any hangups. I just don't like bein’ kept awake all night by the sound of my two idiot friends bumpin’ uglies in the apartment right next to mine. They know how thin those walls are; we built the damn things!"
Drax sat down at the table with Rocket, still smirking. He gave the raccoon a soft pat on the head, which Rocket would normally have objected to but he was just too damn tired to give a shit.
"I must congratulate them," Drax said, much to Rocket's confusion. His voice became wistful. "On my planet it is tradition for a couple's first time copulating to be celebrated the morning after by pouring a pail of mushiiger blood over them."
As much as Rocket would love to see Peter and Nebula doused in animal blood right now, he didn't know for sure that it was the first time they'd done the deed. Who knew what they’d gotten up to when Nebula last went to visit Peter on Earth.
"You're doing what with a pail of blood?"
The sound of the door fwooshing open again drew Rocket's eyes in that direction, where a disheveled-looking Peter Quill was entering the room, dressed casually and with his hair looking even messier than usual. Despite the strangeness of the question he had just asked, he wore a broad smile on his face.
Rocket scoffed. "Well shit," he placed his mug down hard, "I wonder why you look so giddy this morning," his voice dripped with sarcasm.
Peter's smile grew into a full-blown grin.
He chuckled smugly, flattening his hair down a little. "I guess you heard then.”
Oh if you only knew, Rocket thought, his left eye starting to twitch again. Whether it was because of the sleep deprivation or the caffeine he couldn’t tell anymore.
The Terran man made his way across the room to the kitchen area, getting a good look at Rocket’s face on his way there. He gave a wince at the sorry state of his best friend and froze in place.
“Uh…” he started, his cheeks turning pinker, “did we…?”
“Keep me awake all night by hollering like cats in heat?” Rocket finished his sentence for him. Peter suddenly found it impossible to look his friend in the eye. “Yeah. Thanks a bunch. It’s not like some of us have to be up early saving the frickin’ galaxy or anything.”
Peter made his way to the fridge, pulling out some milk. “The galaxy isn’t in any danger right now. During my whole visit the only times people have come in here is to whine about animals making nests in their pipes.”
Rocket, feeling insulted, fixed Peter with his most deadly glare. Peter held his arms out to the side, milk sloshing in the carton he was now holding.
“So we were a little loud! I’m sorry, okay,” he put the milk down on the counter and started looking through the cabinets for something, “It happens. Sometimes you just get so into it that you don’t notice how loud you’re getting. Also, do you have any honey in here?”
The raccoon scoffed, watching Quill dumbly stick his head in one of the cabinets and look around inside. “A little loud,” he repeated wryly, “I’ve been in exploding ships that were quieter than the two of you.”
“I can attest,” Drax agreed, standing up from his chair. He moved over to Peter and gave him a hearty slap on the back, causing him to lurch forward and hit his chin against the cabinet. He yelped and retracted his head from it, rubbing his jaw. “Nebula reaches an impressive volume when she-”
Nope!
Rocket pressed his ears down flat against his skull and started humming the tune of Smells Like Teen Spirit (which had been stuck in his head for the last two days, not helping with his sleeping issue) to block out the conversation. He watched as Drax continued to speak, making a series of animated gestures at points. Peter didn’t seem all that enthused about whatever it was Drax was saying though, going about his business preparing two mugs of hot drinks. He did, however, look alarmed when Drax leaned down to ask something. The Terran gave his head a shake and rushed out a hasty reply.
It wasn’t until Peter started walking away towards the back room of the Headquarters that Rocket uncovered his ears.
“Drax, I’m not telling you any more,” Peter was insisting, “I have better things to do than brag to my friends about my sex life like a horny teenager.”
“No you don’t,” Drax replied bluntly.
Peter whirled around. “I’m not telling you! Anything me and Nebula do in the privacy of her apartment is no one’s business but ours.”
Rocket snarked. “Yours and everyone else in a four-block radius.”
He got no response that time as Peter disappeared into the back room. He let out a long yawn as Drax came back to sit beside him.
“I don’t understand why he got so aggravated,” the Kylosian huffed, hoisting himself onto his chair. The legs bent slightly outward beneath his muscular frame. “I would always boast to the other villagers about my wife’s sexual prowess. She found it flattering.”
Burying his face in his paws, Rocket muffled an exasperated sigh. “For the love of flark, I don’t want to think about any of you people doin’ the nasty.”
The door then opened again, causing him to groan. Looking over at the new arrival, Rocket’s headache seemed to double in intensity.
Nebula eyed the raccoon derisively as she strode into the room. “Is this how you greet everyone who comes in here now?” she asked. “Must be great for business.”
She looked calm and collected… too much so. She was dressed nicer than usual too, almost as if she was making a fruitless attempt to act like nothing happened the previous night. Though the sleeveless turtleneck she'd put on was probably chosen purely so she could hide something…
Rocket narrowed his eyes.
“You…” he spoke in a deathly whisper, pointing at her with an accusatory claw. Nebula’s brows raised. “You’re the real reason I hardly slept all night.”
Her jaw clenched and she suddenly found it difficult to look at Rocket or Drax. There was a long stretch of awkward silence in the room as Nebula tried to think of a retort.
“I don’t see how your insomnia is my fault,” she finally said.
Oh, so she was trying to play dumb, huh? Rocket stared daggers at her. “I see. I guess I was mistaken. There must have been some other person in your apartment making ungodly noises while yelling ‘Yes Peter! Right there, Peter! I’m not squeezing your head too tight am I, Peter?’” He did the worst impression of her he could manage.
At that, Nebula grunted and looked away again, cheeks turning a darker shade of blue. Drax guffawing at Rocket’s mimicry was only attributing to her humiliation as well.
“Nebs, no offense- actually all offense- but you sound like a howling baboon when you’re in the sack. It’s fuckin’ embarrassing to hear.”
She grit her teeth, approaching Rocket with crossed arms and staring him down. “I’m not going to let you make me feel shitty about this. I wasn’t that loud.”
From the way her eyes darted around, Rocket could tell that she didn’t believe her own words in the slightest.
“I must agree with Rocket,” said Drax, causing Nebula to shoot him a hard stare, “you are what we would call on my planet: a squealer.”
Rocket let out his first genuine laugh of the day at that. The cyborg clenched her fists, the shame setting in as her face flushed impressively darker. “You know, I was only making those noises to encourage Peter.” She tried to shift the blame.
"Oh really?"
Rocket turned to see Peter re-entering the room, having found the bottle of honey he'd been looking for. The shit-eating grin he sported soon melted into a more genuine smile as he locked eyes with Nebula.
"They sounded pretty real to me," he gave her a wink. Glancing back at Nebula, Rocket saw the beginning of a smile forming on the blue woman's lips, her anger at the room's other occupants forgotten in the moment. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Nebula look so openly and peacefully happy before.
It almost made him feel bad about his earlier words.
Peter returned to the kitchen counter where he’d left the two half-finished drinks he’d been making and squeezed some honey into his. After giving them a quick stir, he picked up both steaming mugs and moved them to the coffee table on the other side of the room, away from Rocket and Drax. A wise decision, thought Rocket, and not because he'd gotten a whiff of Nebula's coffee as Peter had walked past and smelled how much better it seemed than his own.
"I was gonna bring these back to bed but since you're here…" Peter lowered himself onto the couch beside the table and patted the seat next to him, "...we might as well bless our friends with our company for a while."
Nebula seemed a little hesitant at first, but after giving Rocket another death glare, she moved to sit beside Peter on the couch. She sat close to him, but not close enough to be touching.
It was night and day, the difference in the ways the two lovers sat. Peter relaxed against the back of the couch, still wearing his dumbass grin and sipping contentedly from his mug like he was on a wintertime staycation. Nebula, on the other hand and against all odds, was sitting upright and tense, looking down intently into her coffee like she was having a staring contest with it. She kept shifting in place like she didn't know what to do with herself.
After a moment, Peter noticed the rigidity with which Nebula was holding herself and placed a hand upon her knee, giving it a light squeeze.
“You okay?” he asked, green eyes full of a warmth that Rocket hadn’t seen in them for many years. It was sickeningly sweet.
Some of the tension seemed to evaporate off Nebula’s body as she looked down at his hand on her leg, then back up at him. “Of course,” she replied, flashing him a small smile of her own.
Peter sat up in his seat. “Happy to hear it,” he said, and leaned in for a kiss. Seeing this, Nebula turned her head to the side so that his lips met her cheek instead.
“Not in front of them…” she muttered, just loud enough to be heard.
“Wow, you serious? That’s the line you’re drawing?” Rocket could almost see Nebula’s patience growing thinner every time he spoke. “You’ll let the whole street know when Quill’s diddling your holes, but lord have mercy if anyone sees you smoochin’.”
If looks could kill, Rocket would have been a red splatter on the table under Nebula’s gaze.
“Are you done?” she snapped. “I’m getting tired of your bitching, Rocket.”
“Oh, you don’t get to be tired of anything after waking me up at two in the morning and ruttin’ like wild animals for three frickin’ hours.”
Drax took Rocket’s mug of coffee since he didn’t have a drink of his own ("Hey!" Rocket exclaimed in protest) and raised it in some kind of toast. “Three hours!” he echoed loudly. “That is more than I expected of you, Quill.”
It was then Peter’s turn to look disgruntled. But after a moment of contemplation, his expression morphed into a cocky smirk. "Yeah. Doing twenty squats every morning really paid off."
A matching smirk etched itself across Nebula's features for a split second before she forced it back into a neutral state. “We didn’t plan to go on for that long, okay. It just happened. And we’re sorry, so get off our asses about it,” she lifted her mug to her face, conveniently covering her flushed cheeks from view. She started to sound complacent. “We’re sorry that we had so much sex last night.”
“And this morning,” Peter chimed in, bumping his leg playfully against his girlfriend’s. She didn't look up from her drink but bumped his leg with hers in return.
Rocket grumbled. “Glad I was already gone by the time ‘the dawn chorus’ started then.”
Nebula let out a sigh, glancing towards the door like she wanted to leave. Peter, still sensing her discomfort, went on the defensive again.
“Cut us some slack just this one time, Rocket. It makes perfect sense that we got a little carried away. It's been a long while for me, and it was Nebula’s first-”
“-first time in a while, too,” Nebula spoke over him quickly.
The Terran shot her an apologetic look.
“Yeah,” he returned his hand to her knee, running it up and down along her thigh in a sensual way. Nebula’s leg twitched as if she were going to pull it away, but she decided against it, letting Peter caress her. It was plain to see that she liked it even if she had a pretty good poker face about it. “And Nebula sometimes has trouble with her body, so I'm proud of her for being so vulnerable with me."
With an earnest expression, Nebula faced Peter, finally leaning back on the couch with him. "And you. It's good that you're opening yourself up to new things, too," her expression hardened, "but blabber any more about my personal issues and I'll choke you."
Peter snickered. "Is that a promise?" he asked with a suggestive wriggle of his eyebrows. He giggled harder when Nebula lightly elbowed him in the ribs with her mechanical arm in response.
At Rocket's side, he heard Drax give a small sigh. Looking up at him, the muscular man had a glazed-over vacantness in his eyes. The raccoon swatted Drax's arm with his tail.
Drax didn't seem to have felt it; he was too preoccupied staring at the new couple in an almost wistful way. Rocket looked from them to him and let out a single hollow chuckle.
"Don't tell me you want in on that?" he teased.
If Drax understood what Rocket had been implying with that, he gave no sign. He remained so still in his seat that when he suddenly started talking it made Rocket jump. The caffeine and sugar must be messing with his fight or flight response.
"The two of you remind me of my late wife and I."
Peter and Nebula looked across at Drax, bewildered.
"...we do?" Peter blinked.
Drax gave a nod. "Certainly. My wife was a stern and unflappable warrior, and the most ruthless huntress in our village. But the mornings after we made love, she would look blissfully happy, as Nebula does right now."
Baffled, Nebula pointed to herself. "Does this look like a happy face to you?" she spoke in an overcompensatory monotone manner.
"Yes?" Drax answered like it was the most blatant thing in the world. "She too would try to remain stoic, but you could sense how satisfied she was just by being in her presence. The differences in the way she carried herself…"
He trailed off, lost in a memory.
Nebula turned to Peter and mouthed 'should we leave?' to him, but before he could respond, Drax went into a different tirade, outstretching his arm in Peter's direction.
"And you, Quill. You aren't that different from me after all."
Hesitantly, and with the air of someone who instantly regretted the action, Peter asked, "I'm not?"
Drax slapped a palm down against the table, beaming at Peter with some form of pride. "Despite your squishier body and how pathetic you tend to be, your penis is able to tame even the most cold-blooded killing machine! I commend you!"
At this point, Nebula had buried her face in her hands and looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her up. Peter glanced at his girlfriend sympathetically but looked like he was trying really hard not to laugh.
Instead, he placed a hand on Nebula's back and began rubbing it affectionately. "Nah, Nebula can never be tamed," he leaned down and pressed a wet kiss to the back of her head. She grunted in response and Peter finally did let out a little laugh. "I wouldn't have her any other way."
Rocket sighed and downed the remainder of his coffee. As miffed as he was with the two of them, there was no denying that both of them had been a lot happier since they had officially gotten together.
Peter was laughing and smiling in a way he hadn’t done since before the Blip. The raccoon had spent so long pessimistically thinking that he would never see his friend like this ever again. Peter would never be the exact same way he was back then of course, but that was to be expected. Although his grief over Gamora had destroyed him for so long, and would never truly stop affecting him, it was blatant to see how it had put things more into perspective for him. He was more mature now, especially after spending some time on Earth with his grandfather and new grandmother, and him realizing his new love for Nebula was one of his first steps into the next chapter of his life, and accepting, then moving on from the loves and losses of his last.
And as for Nebula, she’d already grown and changed a great deal over the course of the time Rocket had spent with her after Thanos made the rest of the Guardians disappear. But in spite of how different of a person she had become since the first time they’d encountered her, Rocket would have never considered, even as a joke, that she would end up falling in love with Peter Quill of all people. She hadn’t confided in him much about her feelings for him, but she didn’t need to in order for Rocket to see how much she’d grown to care for him over the years. As a person very similar to her, who had also been tortured and rebuilt into something they were never supposed to be, it gave Rocket hope to see Nebula love and be loved in return. Allowing herself to become the person she wanted to be.
He let out a long sigh.
“Look, just…” Rocket started, but faltered. He was done being harsh on the pair but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t at least stand up for his right to a good night’s sleep. “...I’m happy that you guys are happy, and that you’re having so much fun shoving things in each others’ holes-”
“Dude!” Peter and Nebula said in unison, cringing at whatever imagery entered their minds.
“-and you can keep doing it. Just for cryin’ out loud, keep it to yourselves!” he concluded. “I’m sure you can come up with some creative ways to keep each others’ mouths shut.”
Both of them made vague noises of resigned agreement, but Rocket could tell by the contemplative looks both of them gained in that instant that his work here was done.
Giving Rocket’s head one final pat, Drax rose from his chair, heading to the door. “I must be getting back to the children.” Before exiting, he paused to say one last thing. “Some of them were awoken in the night by a howling werebeast and I must tell them that I have successfully slain it.”
As Drax left, Nebula’s head found its way into her hands again and she let out a long muffled groan. Peter, meanwhile, was stifling his laughter with the back of his hand. Rocket couldn’t help but smirk, too. Nothing like a little humiliation to teach someone a lesson if you asked him.
After a minute or so of hiding her face in shame, Nebula finally sat up, slapping her hands against the couch cushions. “I have work to do,” she declared, not wanting to discuss her and Peter's nighttime tryst anymore.
Peter went back to drinking his tea. "What's on the agenda for today?" He asked. He shifted in his seat until his back was resting against the arm of the couch, and then he stretched his legs out, resting them across Nebula's lap. Nebula blinked a couple of times, caught off-guard by the intimacy of this action, but relaxed back into her seat under the weight of his calves.
"Nothing you’ll find interesting," she replied, "I just need to talk to some people about finally building something where the Collector's Emporium used to be."
"About damn time," said Peter. Rocket knew that he would be happy to see the place he last saw Gamora rebuilt into something new. It had been cleaned up since Thanos’ attack on Knowhere, but since then it had remained an empty lot. It was one hell of an eyesore. "You know what you wanna turn it into?"
Nebula nodded. "We've had the High Evolutionary's animal test subjects in temporary habitats for too long now. There's high demand for a sanctuary they can all live in."
Rocket was glad to hear this. Some of the animals really had been causing a lot of chaos all over Knowhere, and they needed to be kept somewhere they could be properly taken care of.
He kept listening to their discussion, glancing every now and then at the door, hoping to catch someone about to come in seeking assistance from the Guardians. Alas that didn’t happen, nor were any calls coming through for them, so Rocket was left sitting there with his head in his paws, listening to his friends chatting about Nebula’s boring leadership duties.
God his eyelids were so heavy…
With a yawn and a feeble attempt to keep his arms from buckling, Rocket slumped forward until his chin pressed against the table and sleep finally took him.
Peter looked over as he heard a light thump coming from Rocket’s direction. When he saw that the raccoon had fallen asleep, he gave a sigh of relief. He did feel guilty about keeping him awake last night…
…that being said, he didn’t regret what happened at all.
He watched Nebula as she drank her coffee, cradling the cup in her hands, her metal one grasping the ceramic with a well-practiced lightness. She felt his eyes on her and glanced his way. With it practically just being the two of them in the room now, the air between them was different.
Nebula smiled radiantly at him and his heart soared. He adored these moments they shared; the quiet, private moments where Nebula showed this softer side of herself to him.
His thoughts drifted to the way she’d been last night. It had all been new territory for her, so she had been hesitant. She’d tried her best to remain in-control of everything but her anxiety was clear, especially as she’d revealed her body fully to him; flesh, and metal, and scars, and all. She’d been tense at the start, trying to do everything perfectly despite her inexperience, but had come to relax after accepting that clumsiness was expected and Peter didn’t mind.
Gradually as the night went on, Nebula became more comfortable, learning to move and touch and react in the ways that felt natural to her, leading to her going from reserved and nervous to an excited, moaning mess against him…
"What?" The voice of his lover snapped him back to the present, where Nebula's big black eyes scanned him. Peter smirked.
"Nothing…" he leaned against the back of the couch, resting his head atop the cushion, "...just thinking about last night."
Nebula pressed her lips into a thin line and looked down, her face turning a shade of azure that Peter adored so much now.
“I had fun,” he assured her, though he hoped he’d made that obvious. Both of them had. Neither one of them had been willing to stop until they were well and truly spent, completely losing themselves in the pleasure they were giving each other. The combination of Peter’s lengthy dry spell and Nebula’s inexperience had been the perfect cocktail for a long, passionate night of exploration and release.
“...Me too.” Nebula replied, the corners of her mouth twitching up. For most of her life, Nebula had struggled with allowing others to touch her. It made sense, since the only experiences with touch the blue woman had known for the longest time were when someone was trying to hurt her. When she’d been restrained and had her body operated on and modified against her will. And when her siblings had attacked her with the intent to maim her when they’d been forced to fight.
Their friends would never know, but he and Nebula had been working on her troubles with physical intimacy for a while now. He’d been steadily helping Nebula grow comfortable with the idea of their relationship eventually becoming sexual, reassuring her all the while that she never had to do anything she didn’t want to do for his sake. Which was why he’d been so surprised and elated last night when after the two of them had returned to her apartment in the early hours of the morning (he’d suspected that she’d been stalling for some reason), she’d told him she was ready and allowed Peter to patiently assist her through the motions.
He’d been gentle and slow at first as Nebula, still anxious, got used to everything. But as they kept going and it became apparent that Nebula was enjoying herself (like, really enjoying herself), he’d allowed himself to fully give in to his own pent-up desire, urged on by his new lover encouraging him with her moans and lustful pleas for more.
Peter grinned at the memory, swinging his legs off Nebula’s lap and sitting up on the couch, placing his cup down on the coffee table so he could take her metal hand in both of his.
“I know you did,” he teased, and leaned a little closer to her. This time Nebula reciprocated, meeting him halfway in a soft kiss. He smiled against her lips, tasting the earthiness of her coffee upon them.
When they parted, he looked down at her hand in his, running his thumb over the intricate metal ridges that made it up. He’d seen the lethal things this arm was capable of, especially when one of its weapon forms was active, but she’d been so careful with it last night, keeping her touch feather-light (though the metal was still cold as hell, of course). He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her mechanical knuckles.
His eyes met hers once again and he almost got lost in them. After he’d noticed how unbelievably black they were, he’d often ended up becoming totally captivated by them. Several times on Earth he had laid in his grandpa’s backyard at night, staring up at the stars and feeling homesick. Missing the family he'd left billions of lightyears away. There was a lot of light pollution where he lived so more often than not the sky was starless save for a few sparse specks of white embedded in the endless void. On those nights he would stare up and be reminded of her eyes and his heart would ache. That was one of the numerous things that had caused him to notice how he missed Nebula more than he felt he should. More than he missed his other friends and his sister, and he missed them like crazy.
It was one of many reasons he was grateful for his new life on Earth. The distance had helped him see how much she meant to him.
“I’m proud of you,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, “and thank you for trusting me.”
Nebula placed her now-empty coffee cup on the table beside Peter’s and laid her hand upon his leg, absentmindedly tracing circles on his thigh with it. “Thank you for giving us a chance…” she spoke quietly, vulnerably, and Peter’s chest fluttered.
It still blew his mind that Nebula had had feelings for him for a long while before they started dating. In hindsight there had been a lot of obvious signs, but he’d been too stuck in his own head to notice. He still teased her about her crush on him from time to time.
Her face fell a little. “...and I’m sorry about the noises I made.”
Peter dropped her hand and instead placed his on her shoulders, gripping them tight and positioning himself on the couch so they were face-to-face. “Let me stop you right there,” he said, “do not apologize for those noises. Were they loud? Yeah, I’ll say that much. But were they sexy as hell? Fuck yeah they were.”
Her blush returned to her face. “I’m still embarrassed about it,” she admitted, “I don’t want people knowing that-”
“That you’re having crazy hot sex with your crazy hot boyfriend?” Peter butted in, giving her an overexaggerated wink.
Nebula fixed him with a flat stare. “You sure think highly of yourself, don’t you?” she snarked.
The Terran man shrugged. “Everybody’s good at something.” Saying this, he gave Nebula his most smoldering bedroom eyes, and judging from the way her gaze traveled down his body, it had its desired effect.
He caressed her shoulders, running his hands up and down her arms, loving the contrast between her warm, more-organic right arm, and her cold mechanical left one. One of his hands rose to cup her face, thumb drawing a path over her cheekbone, and she leaned into his touch, eyes fluttering shut.
Enamored by how contented Nebula looked, Peter closed the distance between them once more, at first brushing his lips lightly across hers, then placing his other hand on her back and drawing her closer in order to kiss her more firmly.
She’s a lot more confident now, Peter noted, as Nebula moved her lips in rhythm with his and he felt her hand tangling into his hair. Golden tingles danced through his body as her fingers trailed down over his scalp. It didn’t take long for their kisses to become hungrier. More sensual. Peter found himself being pushed back, and he allowed Nebula to lower him down until he was propped up against the arm of the couch.
Before long she was straddling him, knees resting on either side of his legs. She ran her tongue along his bottom lip, requesting entry, which Peter obliged. He curled his tongue around hers and heard the faintest, needy whine rise up in the back of Nebula’s throat.
Peter’s hands traveled along Nebula’s sides, across the contours he’d gotten so well-acquainted with last night. He felt her quiver under his touch, especially when his fingers ran over her waist. She was sensitive there. She was sensitive in a lot of places, he had discovered to his delight.
He broke their kiss, causing her to groan in protest at the loss of the intimate contact, but he immediately placed his lips against her neck, just below the corner of her jaw, which is where she seemed the most sensitive. She practically melted in his embrace as he kissed and sucked and nibbled her there, her breaths becoming sharp and uneven, and as he tugged the collar of her turtleneck down to kiss lower along her throat, Nebula let out a small, very adorable, yet very audible moan.
Movement from the table on the other side of the room caused the two lovers to freeze.
Rocket lifted his head.
“Get th’ fuck out,” he mumbled, then dropped back off to sleep.
With it finally sinking in that they had allowed themselves to get carried away again, Nebula moved off of Peter, and he sat up with her, trying to flatten down his hair that had gotten mussed up again.
They sat there awkwardly for a moment, looking like deer caught in headlights, until they were positive Rocket had fallen back to sleep. Peter had completely forgotten Rocket was there in the heat of the moment.
Giving Peter one last longing look, Nebula stood with a sigh. “I really do need to get going.”
Peter reached to grab her hand before she moved away. “To be continued then?” he asked, giving her his best set of puppy dog eyes.
She rolled her eyes, but smiled warmly down at him. “To be continued,” she agreed, “...just quieter.” she added, a tad sheepishly.
“Don’t you worry,” Peter released her hand as Nebula began walking away, “once I get my own place back on Earth we can be as loud as the hell we want there,” he promised. He was admittedly nervous about buying and owning his own place, but boy if this wasn’t good motivation to do it.
As Nebula headed for the door, Peter watched the way her hips swung. She’d always walked like that and it had always been kinda mesmerizing to him, but at least now he could openly stare at her ass without feeling guilty or dirty.
Nebula glanced back at him, noticing where he was looking. “Eyes up, Peter,” she ordered him, in the same tone one would use to tell a misbehaving child what to do.
“I can’t help it,” he held up his fingers in front of him in a frame shape, angling them so that he was looking through them at his girlfriend’s rear, “you have a really pretty butt.”
Still looking over her shoulder at him, Nebula got a challenging glint in her eyes. “Well you have a really pretty face, how about that?”
Peter blinked, confused. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to compliment me or insult me…”
She frowned. “...I’m complimenting you,” she said, like it should have been obvious. Her eyes trailed off to the side. “Was I using my aggressive voice again?”
It was then Peter’s turn to roll his eyes. She was still new to the world of flirting and, at times, it really showed. Sometimes Nebula was just as much of a doofus as him and he really wanted to remind her of that right now.
“God I love you,” he said instead, and it caught Nebula by surprise. It was beautiful yet sad how hearing those three little words still stunned her. He decided he would simply have to say it more.
The door opened and the light from outside shone in, casting an almost angelic aura of yellow over her.
“I love you, too,” she smiled, and then left.
Peter stared at the door a while longer after she'd gone, missing her already, even though it wouldn't be long at all before he saw her again.
His lips were still tingling from her kisses.
He turned his attention to Rocket, who was still slumped uncomfortably over the table, neck bending at an awkward angle that would undoubtedly cause him pain if he remained that way.
Standing up, Peter made his way over to the raccoon and gently gathered him in his arms. Rocket made a few grumbly noises but if he'd been woken up, he didn't make it clear.
He carried Rocket over to the couch and gently laid him down upon it, watching as he curled into a more comfortable position on the cushions. Peter then retrieved a blanket from storage and covered Rocket with it.
If anyone came by wanting help from the Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter would deal with them. And the other Guardians could make do without Rocket’s leadership for a few hours (he hoped). He didn’t see the harm in the legendary Star-Lord coming out of retirement just while his friend got some well-deserved sleep.
At that moment, Peter noticed that Rocket hadn’t turned on any music today. How had he not noticed the absence of his tunes playing until now?
Retrieving the Zune that Rocket had left laying on the table, he hit play, making sure as the gentle strumming of an electric guitar began to trickle through the speakers, that he turned the volume down low.